What I’ve Just Finished Writing: This past Friday I completed the full edited draft of Everyday Annunciations’ second body chapter, the one on big, surprising, unwelcome life-changing upheaval.
What hard work that’s been, 7500 words that represent revisiting and thinking in new ways about the toughest parts of my own past, as well as wading into thorny theological thickets about free will, and into lots of other stories about people—including saints—whose first response to their own summonings was an attempted, though ultimately futile, “No! Not today, please.” Feminist theologian Elizabeth Johnson’s insights have been so important to shaping this exploration, as has thinking anew about Jonah (the whale’s belly as correlative for denial-induced depression) and about Job (thanks to Fr. Richard Rohr) and neurobiological research on schema-construction in humans. Not a blithe piece of spring writing in any way, shape, or form, but one that I hope will be life-giving in its entirety (and that I could have used back in 2002), one I feel real good about having wrestled into this shape at this point. Now it cools until sometime in September, to be more fully-twined together then with its sisters, two of which are still merely gleams in my eye right now.
Once the Monday-Tuesday massage rush passes, there’s an article that must be written this week (easy, it seems from today’s perspective, at least) for a June 1 due date. Then I wade back in again to begin chapter 3, which I hope to have roughed in at least partially before I travel on the 24th.
Ah, the romantic writer’s life—sitting in the garden, waiting for the muse. I like this better, actually . . . .
Something Beautiful in My World Right Now: The first flowers of the year have just opened in my mountain yard at 5,000’ of elevation: Fritillaria Imperialis, the cultivated supersized hybrids which are cousins to our tiny delicate yellow bells, the first wildflowers of the year on sunny slopes and in clearings. I’ll bet I’d have seen the native ones blooming in the mountains by now if I’d have had time to go look for them—that’s definitely on the agenda for this week.
